Test beam measurement of the first prototype of the fast silicon pixel monolithic detector for the TT-PET project

TL;DR

This paper reports on the initial testing of a monolithic silicon pixel detector prototype for a PET scanner, demonstrating promising noise, efficiency, and timing performance in laboratory and particle tests.

Contribution

It presents the first ASIC prototype of a monolithic silicon pixel detector for the TT-PET project, with detailed performance measurements.

Findings

Electronics have noise charge below 600 e- RMS

Pixel detection efficiency exceeds 99%

Achieved time resolution around 200 ps

Abstract

The TT-PET collaboration is developing a PET scanner for small animals with 30 ps time-of-flight resolution and sub-millimetre 3D detection granularity. The sensitive element of the scanner is a monolithic silicon pixel detector based on state-of-the-art SiGe BiCMOS technology. The first ASIC prototype for the TT-PET was produced and tested in the laboratory and with minimum ionizing particles. The electronics exhibit an equivalent noise charge below 600 e- RMS and a pulse rise time of less than 2 ns, in accordance with the simulations. The pixels with a capacitance of 0.8 pF were measured to have a detection efficiency greater than 99% and, although in the absence of the post-processing, a time resolution of approximately 200 ps.